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Soft fork

A soft fork (softfork) is a change to the cryptocurrency protocol wherein only previously valid blocks and transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognize the new blocks as valid, unlike a hard fork, a soft fork can still work with older versions of the protocol. If a wallet wants to support new soft fork rules it has to be upgraded.

When a majority of miners upgrade to enforce new rules, it is called a miner-activated soft fork (MASF). When full nodes coordinate to enforce new rules, without the support from miners, it is called a user-activated soft fork (UASF).